Tuesday, June 17, 2025

June 17, 2015: The Charleston Church Massacre

June 17, 2015, 10 years ago: A white supremacist opens fire during a Bible study at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina. It was the deadliest mass shooting at a place of worship in American history.

To make matters worse, that record stood for only 3 years.

Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, known as Mother Emanuel, was founded in 1817. Though not the oldest continuously-operating black church in America -- that would be First Bryan Baptist Church, founded in 1788 in Savannah, Georgia -- it is the oldest AME church in America. In 2015, its pastor was Clementa C. Pinckney, who was also a member of the State Senate.

Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old native of the State capital of Columbia, espoused racial hatred in both a website manifesto which he published before the shooting, and a journal which he wrote from jail afterward. On his website, Roof posted photos of emblems which are associated with white supremacy, including a photo of the Confederate battle flag.

Pinckney had held rallies after the shooting of Walter Scott by a white police officer two months earlier, in nearby North Charleston. As State Senator, Pinckney pushed for legislation requiring police to wear body cameras.

During the hour preceding the attack, 13 people, including the shooter, participated in the Bible study. According to the accounts of people who talked to survivors, when Roof walked into the historic African-American church, he immediately asked for Pinckney, and sat down next to him, initially listening to others during the study. He disagreed with some of the discussion of Scripture.

After other participants began praying, he stood up, and aimed a gun he pulled from a fanny pack at 87-year-old Susie Jackson. Jackson's nephew, 26-year-old Tywanza Sanders, tried to talk him down and asked him why he was attacking churchgoers. The shooter said, "I have to do it. You rape our women, and you're taking over our country. And you have to go." 

In the aftermath, Jamelle Bouie wrote in Slate"Make any list of anti-black terrorism in the United States, and you'll also have a list of attacks justified by the specter of black rape." He cited the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, the Rosewood Massacre in Florida in 1923, and the murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955 as examples.

When Roof said he intended to shoot them all, Sanders dove in front of Jackson and was shot first. Roof fired at the other victims, shouting racial epithets. He reportedly said, "Y'all want something to pray about? I'll give you something to pray about." Roof reloaded his gun five times. Sanders' mother and his five-year-old niece, who also attended the study, survived the shooting by pretending to be dead on the floor. In total, 9 people were killed, and 1 other was injured.

The day after the shooting, President Barack Obama visited Charleston, and said, "Once again, innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun... We as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries."

Nothing was done about gun control, of course. But on July 9, the South Carolina legislature passed a bill to remove the Confederate flag from display outside the State House, and Governor Nikki Haley signed the bill. The flag was taken down the next day.

Roof was found to have targeted members of this church because of its history and status. On December 15, 2016, Roof was convicted of 33 federal hate crime and murder charges. On January 10, 2017, he was sentenced to death. He was separately charged with nine counts of murder in State court. He pleaded guilty to all nine state charges in order to avoid receiving a second death sentence, and as a result, he was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

As of June 17, 2025, he remains in United States Penitentiary Terre Haute in Indiana. Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was executed there in 2001. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving bomber of the 2013 Boston Marathon, is also there. So is Robert Bowers, who broke Roof's record with 11 shooting deaths at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018, joined him on Death Row at Terre Haute in 2023.

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